Garuda Indonesia Crew Accused Of Stealing iPhone, Dumping It In River

An entire Garuda Indonesia crew has been temporarily suspended, after a passenger had his iPhone stolen onboard a flight, with the belief that a crew member have been the culprit. This story has gone viral in Indonesia, given the extent to which the passenger has investigated this situation, and how (sort of) damning the evidence is (thanks to David for flagging this)…

Phone goes missing on Garuda Indonesia flight, ends up in crew hotel

This incident happened on June 6, 2025, and involves Garuda Indonesia flight GA716, operating from Jakarta (CGK) to Melbourne (MEL). A man named Michael Tjendara was traveling on this flight. During takeoff, he sat in seat 30D, and placed his iPhone in the seat back pocket. After takeoff, he moved to seat 32E, to be able to rest during the flight.

However, after the aircraft landed in Melbourne around 11AM local time, the man realized that his phone was missing. He reported the incident to the crew, though at that point some passengers had already disembarked, so it wasn’t practical to search the aircraft cabin.

He reported this issue to the Garuda Indonesia station manager at the airport, and also filed a claim with the airport’s lost and found department. At this point, you’d assume that anyone could be behind this, but this is also where it gets interesting.

He was tracking the location of his phone, and shortly after 1PM, the phone’s location was at the Mercure Southbank Hotel, which is also the Garuda Indonesia crew hotel. So he immediately drove to the hotel with his family. The hotel manager reportedly confirmed that the crew had checked in there, and “no other passengers” (I’m not sure how they’d know that, but I’m just passing on what’s claimed).

So at this point he contacted Garuda Indonesia’s station manager, and he actually came to the hotel. A search was conducted in some of the hotel rooms of crew members, but not all rooms were inspected. Until shortly before 4PM, the phone was still detected inside the hotel.

At around 4PM, the entire crew left the hotel. Then around 40 minutes later, the phone was suddenly detected at the edge of the Yarra River, around 100 meters from the hotel. So the passenger and the Garuda Indonesia station manager both searched the Southbank Promenade, including checking trash cans, bushes, and drains.

Then shortly after 5:20PM, the phone was still showing as being at the riverbank, and shortly after 7:30PM, the iPhone was showing as being in the middle of the Yarra River.

Garuda Indonesia has taken the step of suspending the entire crew, pending an investigation. As the airline explains in a statement:

“To facilitate the investigation process, all cabin crew members on duty have been temporarily dismissed from flight duties. We continue to communicate with the passenger and will accompany him until the process is completed, as part of our commitment to ensuring the safety and comfort of all passengers.”

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A post shared by Michael Tjendara (@michaeltjendara)

My take on this Garuda Indonesia stolen phone story

We actually hear of iPhone theft on airplanes a fair bit, and a surprising amount of time, the crew is involved. I find that kind of shocking on a couple of levels. For one, you’d hope that crew wouldn’t be involved in passenger theft. But even more than that, stealing an iPhone just seems outright dumb, for the very reason we’re seeing here — it’s easy to track the location of a missing iPhone, and that can be pretty incriminating. It seems like a high risk and low reward way to go about stealing.

I’ve gotta say, this story is much more interesting than the typical “iPhone goes missing on a plane” story. For one, this guy did quite some sleuthing, and the extent to which he put effort into finding his phone is quite something. Furthermore, huge kudos to Garuda Indonesia for how cooperative they’ve been, with the station manager even coming to a hotel to help search crew rooms.

For the most part, Garuda Indonesia flight attendants are lovely, and I couldn’t imagine a vast majority of them trying to steal anything from a passenger. At the same time, there are always some bad apples, and the evidence here definitely points in the direction of a crew member being involved:

• iPhone data tracking doesn’t lie, and clearly the phone was at the crew hotel
• Of course it’s possible that someone else happened to be at the hotel who stole the phone, but it seems unlikely they’d dump the phone, unless they knew they were under investigation

Based on the information we have, I think it’s highly likely a crew member was involved, though not “beyond a reasonable doubt,” if that’s the standard required.

On the surface, suspending the whole crew seems like an overkill. At the same time, this is clearly just temporary, until an investigation is completed. I hope the airline is able to figure out who is behind this, and that they get the proper punishment (and not the rest of the crew).

I can’t help but wonder if only one crew member truly knew of this, or if some crew members are covering for one another. At a minimum, I’d have to think that crew members at least have a suspicion, based on how different people were reacting to these accusations.

Bottom line

A story is going viral in Indonesia about an iPhone that was stolen on a Garuda Indonesia flight. While it goes without saying that anyone could be behind this, the iPhone was tracked to the crew hotel. The airline took these accusations really seriously, to the point that the station manager even went to the hotel and started searching rooms of crew members.

While the iPhone ultimately wasn’t found during those searches, some time after the crew left the hotel, the iPhone was reportedly located in a nearby river. The entire crew has now been suspended, pending the outcome of an investigation.

What do you make of this Garuda Indonesia stolen iPhone story?